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It's brilliantly ironic though, isn't it? That the free market may very well be the model that ends the vice grip utility companies hold over their consumers? That every consumer can now, in effect "vote" with their dollars, and if enough people choose to do so, bring down the entire archaic structure of the power business? A feat which no amount of legislation has been able to accomplish?

I wouldn't say its ironic, it's just how free market works. If keeping these companies afloat is due to government intervention, then it falls outside of free market. If anything, I would say free market would dictate that at some point in time, renewable energy will become cheaper due to dwindling supplies of nonrenewable fuels, thus people would change to the cheaper alternative.

The reason I said it was ironic is that solar energy (and environmental issues in general) is a very liberal ideal and that they have tried everything to promote it without much success (Solyndra comes to mind.) Meanwhile, the idea of the free market is a fairly conservative ideal, and that might be the reason solar power makes it big.

I'd have to say that state funded alternative energy and environmental issues would be a very modern liberal idea, but the topic of conservation and alternative energy would be very classically liberal were it not for their execution.

Its not ironic because you don't understand the free market. The free market is to policy as atheism is to religion. Although I understand why you think its ironic, I think its based upon your assumptions which are faulty. Everyone with a clear head on their shoulders wants renewable energies that can compete with conventional methods. Newsflash: we don't have a free market, we have a corporatism and monopolies aren't even the worst of it.

What you identify as irony is actually the reason why your attribution of solar's success to the 'free market' is nonsense.

It's taken lots of funding and government promotion to make solar viable, if/when it succeeds it will owe a great deal of its success to those efforts, in the face of energy providers undercutting those efforts in the name of the free market.

We can't discount the fact here that the U.S. government has put in place protectionist tariffs that force American citizens to pay substantially more for solar panels than citizens of other countries. NYT Article

We do this because they feel that the Chinese are subsidizing their solar production (which they are) and that makes Chinese panels more price-attractive and gives them an unfair advantage over U.S. manufacturers. So we slap a tariff on incoming panels on one end (forcing up the cost of solar) and then we are using tax payer funds (money out of your pocket and mine) to subsidize solar production for our own companies so that they can try and compete.

It's destructive to solar adoption to artificially increase it's cost. American citizens and U.S. companies have to pay more for their solar panels (making them less likely to buy them). U.S. manufacturers now no longer have access to the cheaper Chinese solar cells and instead have to pay the protected U.S. rates. That makes manufacturers less competitive globally (which likely reduces profits and employment - both in the form of lower sales and lost opportunity for growth). That also encourages manufacturers to move their manufacturing to another country where they can access their key components without U.S. tariffs in place bumping up the cost.

Since the Chinese are willing to use their tax payer funds to heavily subsidize their solar panels then we (in the U.S.) should not be trying to fight that but instead take advantage. We should be buying those cheap panels at that cheap price and leverage that to accelerate solar deployment in the U.S.

Liberal idea? Liberal is the disbursement of subsidies that go to oil companies to keep them afloat. I find it ironic that people who are pro-government and pro-regulation sit there cheering on the government for regulating, even though the government is largely lobbied and owned by the companies they rally against.

Solar has been heavily invested in by the most entrepreneurial individuals and companies on earth. The free market will do anything to take down bloated industry propped up by government coddling. It's government that often stands in the way of the innovation that ultimately benefits society. When governments can be bought, those with the most capital and the most to lose will buy them.

Have to disagree with you on one point - the government is probably responsible for more innovation than that which it "stands in the way" of - government subsidy for R&D is responsible for kickstarting PV solar panels, the computer, the internet, space exploration and all its associated inventions/innovations, etc. etc.

Valid point that government departments/seats can be bought, but not entire governments (at least not the US government). If corporations truly had bought the US government, the EPA wouldn't exist.

I don't think you fully understand the impact here. The utilities companies you're talking about, aren't corporations, they are city governments. A lot of cities in the US are funded primarily through equal parts sales tax and utilities revenues. This means that cities are going to have to find funding elsewhere, tax something else. It's progress for sure, but we're all going to have to bear some of the costs of this progress.

Guys, guys. We take over the grid and create a grid that is decentralized in which every person generates power and excess is sent to the grid to supply houses/businesses that need more than they can generate.

Ok here's the thing ,I like to listen to old radio shows from 1940s-60s and sometimes they still have the comercials left in. Well one them was advertising solar panel kits for houses to generate own electric and I think help save on re-souses for the war effort and return a bit of it back to the grid. So ya the idea been around a long time but has yet to ever taken hold.

There is no such thing as a free market. There never was and never will be. It's an outdated concept that was used as an ideal to describe very crude economic models from ages ago.

What happens here is an industry that expects its government/the population of its country to regulate markets in a way that allows it to stay in business.

Although corporate capitalism is rampant in the US: It's an industry that rejects not only competition (which is normal under corporate capitalist systems) but also progress that other corporations engage in and as such is allowed to fail.

tl;dr: Solar companies got too powerful and they can't hold them back anymore through lobbyism or some kind of other corruption. Now they die.

I think a growing adoption of electric cars will go a long way to countering the problems this article talks about. How they buy electricity will probably change since instead of having very valuable power during the day they'll have potentially a more even load since people will be charging their cars overnight.

The utilities will be facing changes but I don't think they're going to actually disappear because our power needs are much much higher than what we can produce from our tiny rooftops.

In economics, it's called 'Induced demand'
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Induced_demand, wherein after the supply increases, more of a good is consumed. The 'law of pigs' is sufficient, and somewhat more self-explanatory as a descriptor.

This is a good point. I foresee utilities becoming like big batteries instead of power plants. They'll buy up your excess electricity during the day, store it, and sell it at night. They'll turn a profit by making you pay a lot for electricity at night.

I'm fine if the physical disk disappears, but can we keep at least FLAC quality in the future, so that our audio quality standards don't go backward just because most people don't notice? It would be nice if civilians could hold high quality recordings, in addition to the copyright holders.

I don't impute that motive to the poster, but I'm nervous that the end of the CD will mean everything is available for download in 320 Kpbs (variable or fixed) max, because the record companies are evil, and have shown little desire to release downloadable files in anything better than that.

Sure, for most listening it doesn't matter, but it's the principle that I find disturbing.

Compared to VHS the data storage was denser, more stable (but not by much) and had faster I/O times. Why do you think TV studios were still using it in the mid 90s? (been out of the industry since then so dont know if it's still in use)

It should turn the stomachs of the electorate, but it doesent. I live in a corner of the country where farmers are paid not to grow food by the feds. What dumbass came up with the idea if paying people to continue a business model thad does not work.

Land that's not growing crops doesn't make farmers money. Most farmers would put their entire acreage under plow and grow on it. There are a few problems with that though.

Wildlife. One big field is hard on wildlife populations. After the DNR started working with farmers the wildlife populations have been booming creating addition industries. It also keeps native species alive.

Wetlands and waterway conservation. Farmers avoid growing on land that would otherwise be at risk of erosion or being underwater. This keeps a huge amount of soil out of the waterways. This keeps rivers clear and reduces the amount of chemical runoff.

Soil conservation. Working the soil year after year is hard on it. Wind and water erosion. Loss of earthworms and other soil borne species leads to losses of vital mechanisms that keep soil healthy.

Keep prices high enough to prevent unprofitable dips which would force the less successful farmers out of business. Ultimately we'd rather have the additional growing capacity then a more efficient (economically speaking) agriculture center. This is most based on a desire not to be dependent on food imports which would affect national security.

In addition to the info provided here, this policy started as a great depression policy to help farmers recover (make crops more profitable). However, like most things, even when the need for the policy disappeared (arguably disappeared) the policy stayed in place.

As a person entering the utilities as a new grad right now, I'm happy to report that the majority of this report is sheer bullocks. Micro-generation is nowhere near the state that would cause it to be even close to viable as a replacement for current generation and distribution techniques.

Reliability. We are talking about installing capacity at over 2x our current $/MW generating capacity, with a capacity factor below 30%? Good luck convincing investors to jump on this one. This is the biggest reason solar will not become a major grid supplier until storage is figured out.

Storage - Seriously, look into the sad state of large-scale energy storage. Best we can do is CAES or pumped hydro energy storage. We are simply not there yet.

Peaking - This report leaves out the convenient fact that for most grids, their peaking hours are not as conveniently placed as they will lead you to believe. Industrial loads don't ease on at 8AM. They simply require more reliable power than this.
Peaking generators are, indeed, extremely expensive. That's why having solar satisfying your peak load would only lead to more expensive peaking prices on a not-so-sunny day. Trust me when I say you will see a lot of CCGT natural gas generators providing this mid-peak load in the coming years.

Better options. Depending on the area, hydro, wind, and CCGT offer MUCH better generation options at much lower life-span cost. You're looking at a current minimum of $.18/kWh over a solar panel's lifespan. That is with an extremely high entry cost and a 25 year lifespan, and doesn't factor in the ridiculous land requirements for a large-scale solar installation. Once again, good luck with your investors.

Environmental friendliness - once you get into the manufacturing info, you'll realize solar's actually a fairly shitty option, environmentally speaking. Any equipment with a 25 year lifespan is at least half as long-lasting as most new large-scale fossil fuel plants.
Wind turbines offer a much more predictable output (believe it or not), and their $/MW contribution is MUCH better than solar. Hydro has a much higher entry cost, but the lifespan is ridiculous. Check out Eastern Canada's generation mix. It's truly something to be proud of. CCGT is actually a fairly viable generation option, even considering environmental impact (about .25 tonnes/MWh of CO2, about 1/4 that of traditional coal generation). They can be built in 3 years (ridiculously fast) and have a nearly negligible footprint.

Overall, this report I found to be extremely biased, and offers little insight into the actual operation of our energy grid. Capitalism (unfortunate or fortunate to you or me), will always win, meaning we are stuck with shitty forms of generation like biomass (probably one of the worst polluters out there) for the next 20-40 years.

And even if they're not, too late. No one's going to shut down such a huge investment, it doesn't make sense. I don't see hydro electric disappearing, we might stop making new plants, but there's no reason to stop current ones anytime soon. Is there something I'm missing?

Damn, stole my thunder by 33 seconds. I came here to say exactly that, power generation at night is where Hydro really shines. I believe a lot of them pump water up during the day using cheap grid power, essentially like charging a huge battery, then they release it during the night to generate power

Not good. This isn't about solar power becoming more dominant than coal that its putting coal/oil plants out of business, the problem is that on days where you can't get solar energy, suddenly there is the same energy demand as there was in the past, and plants need to be able to meet these demands still. Therefore costs go up as plants are forced to run at lower efficiencies to ensure we all can have power if we need it. That's what the problem is, and in no way is it "good".

Actually, despite the upward trend in the bills we are getting for electricity, that is generally not enough to cover the capital required to build/maintain an upgraded solar field. Many electric utilities are waiting for better tech to maximize electricity producing w/o the fear of damage b/c of the environment they're installed in.

If customers want to move for solar, they're going to be footing the bill for about two decades before price of production comes back down.

The trick is to do some of the grunt work yourself if you can. You cannot get away with wiring the panels to the grid, unless you're a licensed electrician, but you can mount the panels. Also sourcing panels yourself will save lots of money because you avoid the middleman installer/dealer. It's still a lot of money, and not practical for most people to do this kind of work, but I'd love to get a group of people to do volunteer installs. Similar to habitat for humanity, but instead of volunteering to build houses we could volunteer to install solar arrays. Shit, I'm going to try and do that this summer.

I am an electrician that has installed these systems. I would love it if a customer handled the mounting and prep work. I would also no longer be liable from their roof, which would makes it a bit cheaper.

Here at Canton Fair. Find me the HTSUS number for solar panels and I'll give you the landed price in America for a container of them. I'm sure it's cheaper than what you can get in the states by a factor of at least 2.

The important thing to note is that solar makes the most electricity during "peaking times," in the middle of the day when electricity is the most expensive. That is also when utilities make most of their money. If you cut that off, either utilities will raise their rates to ridiculously high amounts for off peak hours, or they will die. An affordable battery system for homes would absolutely crush utilities. That's a very precarious situation.

I really feel like our next major technological breakthrough will be in battery technology. Look at the major complaints with current "high-tech" items - smart phones only last a day or so between charges, electric vehicles are limited in range, hybrid vehicles require huge and very expensive batteries, solar systems require expensive batteries to store energy.

There are so many articles on Reddit lately about breakthroughs is how nanotechnology is being used for storage of energy in more efficient ways. I really feel like the next major breakthroughs should be in this area. It would benefit so many areas.

I almost have to roll my eyes every time I hear that something is powered by Litium-Ion batteries. 787 included.

I don't think this is something we'll know until we know. Research, investment, development, manufacturing, and distribution all take time. I've also seen many potential technologies that are simply forgotten about as they are too uneconomical. Hopefully progress can be made in batteries, but I'm just can't be sure of a breakthrough soon.

That's the whole point.......it doesn't matter what modality the utilities switch to. Even if they did switch to a massive solar field (again large capital investment with 30+ years pay back), the problem is with centralized power production. People are adapting to a distributed power production paradigm, which is threatening the centralized power production paradigm. The modality is mostly irrelevant.

Would it be smart business then for these power companies to switch from centralized power production to decentralized power maintenance? I mean solar panels don't upkeep themselves, make it more like the direcTV dudes in vans who come and fix your dish?

We do invest in solar. Utilities also receive federal benefits, and in some cases, state benefits, to build solar plants. However, the focus on this article is not how local solar will affect coal, but electrical distribution. Electrical distribution will be affected regardless of the power source. The point of this article is that if local solar is implemented, all power plants and utilities will get a big shock, and our industry isn't used to it or made for it.

Its that normally, one cannot simply make his or her own electricity. Even the smallest of generators is hard to run by oneself for any extended period of time (the logistics needed for fuel transport, for example). So most people are willing to pay a premium for it generated elsewhere and piped to your house.

Now, a solar and battery system is something that any bob and jane can install in their own home. Thus they can cut out almost all the middle man in terms of power generation, and their profit with it.

Except I and many other customers pay flat rates, we aren't charged more for "peak times". I do now get a discount for letting the utility cycle my A/C down to 50% during peak loads, but really only very large consumers pay different rates at different times of day, and that is because they can save money by shifting their usage away from peak times.

Also note that many "monopolies" have instead shifted to a model where their profit is guaranteed, and they make more money by encouraging energy conservation; this leads to utilities paying rebates for updating old inefficient appliances and lighting, which has now led to fairly flat consumption curves despite our population and technology use growth.

Finally, the article ignores the reality that demand is actually peaky, which solar doesn't help with. At say 7am, when everyone wakes up and turn on the coffee maker/etc, there's a huge spike in usage. Batteries can respond, but those big coal fired power plants can't. The fundamental nature of power generation is evolving, but since been barely 130 years since the first commercial powerplants went up, acting like change is new is a bit disengenuous

Finally, the article ignores the reality that demand is actually peaky, which solar doesn't help with. At say 7am, when everyone wakes up and turn on the coffee maker/etc, there's a huge spike in usage. Batteries can respond, but those big coal fired power plants can't.

I don't understand. If batteries can respond but not coal plants, then wouldn't solar be able to help?

I don't think peak time is the middle of the day, for most utilities peak is somewhere between 4 and 8 pm. Doesn't make much difference to the discussion here, just an observation from an old utility worker.

Another nit to pick is the statement that the utility is guaranteed a return by the regulators. This is not true, the regulator limits the amount the utility can make on the upside but not the downside. They are free to lose as much as they like. They can return to the regulators to adjust for their losses but that is not guaranteed.

You're right, peaks start in the afternoon (lately they've been starting at around 2 o'clock. The amount of sun in the afternoon would still easily counteract peaking power if local solar was implemented (depending on the area, of course).

In my situation, the utility my plant delivers power to is a public nonprofit. Regulators can deny rate changes, and they have done so to our utility in the past. But eventually, rates will go up if necessary.

If I had the choice that backup would be a hydrogen generator. Split water and capture the H gas during the day. Burn it at night. That requires a bunch of personal infrastructure thou, and who knows what maintenance would be like.

In the article it implied it could be very bad for the consumer, at least initially. The article says that it won't take much solar penetration to create a dramatic increase in prices for people without their own solar systems.

Solar set ups cut into the most profitable portion of utilities profits: peak day power. Think about it, Solar produces the most power around midday, that's when utilities charge the most for their energy.

It's also good for energy security. Solar and especially batteries need to get a good bit cheaper to kill the utilities. I'm not saying it's not going to happen if things continue to progress as they are. Just that it will take time.

The difference here is that the horse carts are being put before the cars because of regulation. This isn't solar winning because of the free market-- both the subsidies and the priority they receive selling to the grid are what are driving this, not cost efficiency.

Does that even matter though, I think they'll still be screwed because even if they have solar power as their source, I'm still going to have my own panels up generating power and won't even need to use theirs.

Are you going to make those panels or buy them?
If the utility company is selling them then they are still okay, hence the investment. Furthermore if they only survive 15-25 years people will have to continuously replace them.

Ah, I didn't think you meant the utility companies would be the ones selling panels, I'd imagine it would be hard for them to have as much of a presence in that market thought when I see the energy hardware being like another household appliance - i.e. you'd get it the same place you buy your microwave, dishwasher and TV and get an electrician to connect it.

You can buy your own cable/dsl modem too, but most people use the ones provided by their ISPs. I can easily see my local electric company offering some deal where they will sell and install the panels and if your house is still connected to the grid perhaps buy back any excess power.

I imagine a utility company that invests heavily in solar panels would be able to keep costs down as well as offer installation services. It'd be a very competitive field that won't go away until the next big electricity breakthrough occurs.

Also, solar alone will not provide you all the power you'll need or want. You'll still need to be hooked up to the grid, so not only do they get to sell you solar panels and buy excess energy from you, but they also get to sell you power when your solar panels won't work.

1: That isn't what that paper said.

2: For the foreseeable future PV cells won't be able to cut the real demand, which is commercial and industrial power load. A Wal Mart, or a grocery store, or an aluminum smelter is not going to get its power from a roof full of PV cells. Not even close.

3: Rational thinking utilities would love nothing more than for everyone to put PV cells down to help blunt the spikes of peak day demand. Laying down new infrastructure to keep up with ever increasing demand is brutally expensive. Most of the grid was designed and built before cell phones, multiple TVs, etc. etc. (a large build up through the 60s and 70s, a snooze during Ronnie Raygun's deregulation, and a mad scramble starting in ~2008 to make up for decades of neglect) Utilities are really getting stretched. It takes years to build up capacity and years or decades to recoup those capitol costs. God help them if electric cars take over; PV cells aren't charging your Tesla roadster any time soon.

4: No, really, utilities would love for you to blunt peak demand, by whatever reason. They have to build to handle peak load, by law, because no one is going to tolerate peak time brown outs. That's ludicrously expensive, and if peak time is only an hour or two the utility will, again, take years to recoup those costs, if ever. If you reduce the spikes in demand it is a lot easier to plan for, a lot cheaper to build for, and you get a much more efficient use when that infrastructure is not being used at capacity for a few hours a day and then sitting at ~50% usage the other 20. Which is why this line:

This is the same reason utilities are instinctively hostile to energy efficiency and demand response programs, and why they must be compelled by regulations or subsidies to create them. Utilities don’t like reduced demand!

is totally false. Most utilities (not all) have all sorts of energy saving tips, will send you free fluorescent light bulbs, tell you to turn your thermostat down, anything they can think of really and those programs are not required by law.

actually these kinda arrays only give them about 65% of their power. The company that builds these outs is doing it in a kinda "you put these on, pay us for the energy usage and we pay the bill for you so you pay 50% less and we get 10%." kinda deal. You don't have any initial cost for deployment either on the grocery store's part either as the solar pannel deployer is covering it. They also put in a battery array so that it can sell back the power at peak hours and incase power goes out they still have power to power the freezers and coolers in the store.

Image a toll-bridge we all use that charges more for peak traffic hours to offset costs... Some people now want to avoid using it during peak hours and use their own private bridges. That's cool, but they also want to have the collective bridge there in perfect readiness for whenever their bridges are insufficient, or inoperative (a meager 67%+ of the time).

What happens to toll prices then? The bridge is not cheaper. Overall traffic isn't drastically reduced. Employees still need to get paid. In fact, since you can no longer predict traffic flow as well, and a minor tendency for many people to spontaneously decide to use the 'backup' at the same time... Costs go up. Costs go up, efficiencies go down, and revenue drops (causing further cost increases).

But, the costs don't just go up for people using the main bridge all the time. They also go up for people with their own bridges too, and future investment in bridge improvements becomes a much riskier proposition...

If we're talking about personal solutions that encompass 100% of personal demand it'd be a non issue, but we're not. ["Intermittency? Forget it, the storage fairy will save us!"... which it would, if we could burn bad math without releasing CO2...]

It´s exactly the problem germany is facing right now. In the past peak demand was handled by flexible natural gas power plants that would run only during peak times. With solar power strongly subsidised and a garuanteed right to sell the PV energy to the grid owners first, the gas power plants simply lose many hours of production time, but they still have to be available in case the sun doesn´t shine so the grid won´t become unstable. Add the fact that prices during peak times are reduced strongly due to the PV input, and you will have serious problems to make an investment in a gas plant that is economically viable. That´s why germany is at the brink of being forced to pay subsidies to gas plants. And this will lead to even higher energy prices in the future.

There seems to be a lot of ignorance in this thread as to how the power grid works and why utility companies are generally against too much power flowing back into the grid from their customers. Many utility companies are against these devices that send power back to the grid because of the extra power management required. Many of the utility companies are only set up on the grid to handle traditional power sources, such as coal or even nuclear, flowing in one direction, their plant to your home/business. The existing equipment setup (such as transformers, insulated wiring, control boxes) between utility company and consumer were initially setup for one direction of flow on the grid and usually with older equipment at that. All upgrades to the system other than the solar panels or wind turbines on the customer's end eventually has to be added to the utility company's system at their cost. The utility company can sometimes be forced to upgrade equipment and technology at their cost to be capable of accepting energy you are sending back with these devices, although they do receive incentives and subsidies from the government just as we do for the initial equipment. This cost of general maintenance upkeep of the grid system is why most utility companies are reluctant to accept incoming energy. There is a lot of costly maintenance involved in upgrading the old grid structures that were introduced roughly 20-30 years ago, so there is a lot of old equipment that was initially setup to handle specific amounts of power at specific loading times. Look into power factors and peak times from the DOE/EPA websites if you're interested in learning more, there is simply too much to explain here

Although they are not "one way," the protective relays are most likely setup with directional elements, which is the biggest issue with Distributed generation. Most of the Power system in the US has been setup for "one way" in that the protection is setup in a directional manner that assumes power would be flowing in a particular direction during a fault. If there Utility generation == Distributed generation at a fault location, the relay may not behave correctly and not trip a breaker when it should.

I'm not saying this problem can't be fixed, but with so many protective relays in the U.S., it'd take a very long time and lots of manpower to change.

10yrs is probably a little aggressive,.. but I'd be more inclined to believe 25yrs (for transformative adoption of solar).

This type of scenario is to be expected. Modular-power (where each individual house is a "node" helping produce/distribute load) is the future of energy. Central distribution is wasteful and inefficient.

You see the same type of dynamic happening in almost every other transfer medium. Centralized distribution is giving way to a more modular/distributed/crowd-sourcing type structure.

It's a little of both actually. Central generation can be a lot more efficient due to economics of scale, but as tech advances the actual difference in cost between many small systems and one large will go down as the overhead becomes smaller. To try to make it all distributed now will cost too much, but the cost will go down more and more until the lower risk of widespread blackouts in things like solar will make central systems more costly than distributed systems.

The author completely misses the fact that the grid has to be maintained into foreseeable future and that this maintenance is costly. Another titbit: the "dirty" coal power generation appears to be cleaner than available micro turbines. If you want clean micro turbines, you need natural gas, lots of it, more than available. The sun really drops its perceived output when on the other side of the planet, no matter how much we hate the power utilities. The battery technology to free us of the grid doesn't exist yet, and saying "a miracle happens here" is not a good technical solution.

Exactly, Solar isn't going to phase out power companies and other power sources overnight, if at all. Batteries suck hard as a method of storing energy (enough energy for household use anyway, A/C, microwaves, etc). The only current sensible way to use solar is a grid tie-in. Residences with solar will cut their reliance on major power companies (and that's even if someone installs these panels), commercial and industrial will still run business as usual.

A hospital I work at looked at the economic viability of using solar panels for their power utility. The estimated cost of the system was 1 million dollars and the yearly savings were $16,000. Solar energy may be promising, but we certainly aren't there yet.

There are quite a few problems with that article. You can't just combine solar and batteries then get off the grid (while maintaining the current consumption). I mean that is doable in some limited areas where you have plenty of sunshine every day, but not so useful in areas where you can have a week of cloudy weather. Even worse, in the winter you get short days, clouds, and snow on your panels. Yet that's when you need most electricity.

There will always be the need for an electric grid, because it's a good thing to have a cheap, reliable and constant supply of electricity.

There exists problems with this. First off, most homes that have solar panels do not generate enough energy to satisfy their own demand. Second, the reliability of renewable energy sources (RES) suck as solar panels and wind generation are HIGHLY intermittent. The only way to combat this issue is to have a method of energy storage to collect the unused energy during off times (such as night time; probably not any for solar but yes for wind) and store it for use when there is either peak demand, OR when the RES is intermittent. Lithium Battery technology is very expensive and needs to be replaced often costing more than just buying electricity in the long run. Supercapacitors are not at a level of consumer grade yet, and aren't really a well tested technology. It will be years before they become widely implemented. There are other sources of energy storage as well but they are just unreasonable for consumer use.

Honestly, The more consumers with RES will just mean prices of energy go up. Supply goes up initially as demand drops. Here in texas there are rolling blackouts in the summer at times as supply cannot meet demand. I feel as the supply will drop as demand drops, then when a prolonged intermittent outage occurs, there will be no way of compensating for the new demand. And even if there was, guess who is going to pay out their ass for it.... Us.

I never understood why a monopoly doesn't stay ahead of the game and switch themselves to the next big thing. Not a complete 360 over night but slowly preparing for the pendulum to swing in a new way. Paper industry slowly building capabilities for them to also produce hemp instead of banning it. Or electric companies providing these alternative models to eventually replace their current. You'd figure the people with the biggest power and money would be capable of transitioning to the new best thing. IMO we also need fusion.

Article is very optimistic and was aimed to amp readers into a mentality that utilities are obsolete. This is not necessarily true though.

First off, many utility companies are embracing renewables such as solar. They are the ones funding large scale solar/wind farms so that they can continue to be important to the energy industry. If you look up the percentages of solar power generated in America for example, utilities are generating far more MW than residential, or "rooftop" solar installations. This is because they're still a relatively expensive home improvement choice that isn't seen as "necessary" just yet.

Also, the grid still needs maintaining, utilities are always going to be a factor here. Average people don't know how to do these things so there will always be a need here for utilities.

Overall though, the article does a good job at pointing out how the pricing will be effected, tho it was probably done in a more provocative way than was needed.

some factual inaccuracies in this article - one specific line that really bothered me was:

(This is the same reason utilities are instinctively hostile to energy efficiency and demand response programs, and why they must be compelled by regulations or subsidies to create them. Utilities don’t like reduced demand!)

This couldn't be more untrue, as many/most utilities actively advertise to their customers ways to be efficient, and help customers sign up for demand response programs.

Similarly,

Problem is, providing power to meet peak load is where utilities make a huge chunk of their money. Peak power is the most expensive power. So when solar panels provide peak power, they aren’t just reducing demand, they’re reducing demand for the utilities’ most valuable product.

As some/many utilities are just the transporter of electricity, they don't get anything extra out of more expensive kWh - the power generators do. (And it's really a smaller component of that, as just the incremental producers are getting paid on the expensive kWh - so peakers, demand response kWh, and other non-contracted producers.)

Three words: economies of scale. It'll never play out like this because electric transmission is relatively efficient and cheap (especially on an already-constructed grid that you need anyway), most people aren't in prime locations for photo-voltaic power, and distributed maintenance is expensive (why do you think utilities are putting in smart meters for remote meter reading).

Is the same reason home gardens don't scare agribusiness...and why agribusiness can produce wheat far cheaper than you ever could.

Does this help explain why states with lots of sunshine (Nevada, Arizona, etc.) aren't promoting solar like mad so that citizens make use of the free sunshine? I can't believe that those states don't have energy policies that make solar supremely attractive and subsidize it to be affordable to the widest number of citizens.